


And If There's No One There

by aban_ataashi



Series: At Least The War Is Over [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Gen, Multiverse, compliant up to endgame at least, post-movie musings, still bitter about certain character deaths but channeling it into fic inspiration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 23:50:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19841113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_ataashi/pseuds/aban_ataashi
Summary: Two people go in search of an infinity stone.One person returns.Timelines are tricky things.





	And If There's No One There

_Time is a strange thing._

_Left alone, it’s unstoppable, undeniable, and by its very nature uniform in the manner by which seconds march forward._

_But when time is tampered with, when it’s turned around and bent backwards and pulled inside out…_

_It can fracture._

* * *

For all of the cynicism and dangerous smiles Nat armors herself with, she _believes,_ more than anyone Clint has ever known.

Clint doesn’t believe, not in anything, not anymore. And so with nothing to hold him back, he finds the worst criminals of the world and does what he’s good at, and with nobody to come home to, he keeps doing it for five long years.

Until Nat finally finds him. Nat, ever the believer, who’s been doing what she can to glue this broken world back together. Nat, who has a plan and is asking him to believe one more time. And for her, maybe he can.

When she goes over the edge and Clint brings stands alone with the stone in hand, he feels the last flicker of belief inside of him die out for good.

Most people don’t realize how dangerous Clint Barton is until it’s too late. Clint waits and watches from a distance, and he carries a bow instead of guns, and because of that people think they can ignore him.

Until his enemies realize that an arrow through the head does the job just as well as any bullet.

Natasha, on the other hand, knows Clint. She knows what he’s capable of, and she knows she can take him in a fight. But the last five years have sharpened his edge more than even she knew, and somehow she finds herself unable to stop him from taking the dive off the cliff.

And Natasha remembers that she’s dangerous, too, because where she goes, death follows.

Bruce snaps his fingers and Clint’s chest goes tight as they all wait, breathless, for some sort of confirmation. He doesn’t know what to expect, doesn’t know if there’s some sign he should be looking for-

And then his phone buzzes, and Laura’s face is smiling up at him, and Clint can barely answer it for how badly his fingers are shaking.

Even then, he doesn’t dare hope until he actually hears her voice. That’s when he starts crying.

It’s the birds that Natasha sees first- two twittering birds that weren’t there before, and now simply _are,_ and she knows in that moment that they did it.

They did it. _She_ did it. All of her work and grief and pain have actually been worth something, because against all odds _they did it._ Her mind is racing, planning out the quickest ways to track them all down, Fury and Maria and Bucky and T’Challa-

And then her thoughts are broken by the buzzing of a phone. Clint’s phone, right where he left it. Natasha doesn’t need to check to know who it is. There are only four people in the world who have that number aside from herself and Fury.

Her joy turns to dread when she realizes that she has to be the one to tell them.

The funeral is nice.

Not nearly good enough, of course. It couldn’t be, not even with all of the honors and praise heaped upon Natasha by the line of mourners. No matter how much they give her, she will always deserve more.

Clint leaves early. He can’t stand to be there another minute, and he’s ready to go home.

“What do we do now?” Laura asks, because as pressing as the philosophical ramifications of what happened to her might be, there are still minute details to be dealt with like school and taxes and whether or not they’ve been declared legally dead.

Clint doesn’t know how to answer that. “We do what we did before,” he finally says. “We live our lives.”

“Five years,” she murmurs in disbelief. She looks at Clint, curious and wary. “What did you during all that time?”

He doesn’t answer.

Natasha has always hated funerals. She’s attended far too many.

But she goes, because she owes that to Clint. She stands beside Laura and the kids, pushing down her own grief and self-blame as far as it will go because they need her to be strong. She owes him that, too.

“You did good with what you had,” Fury tells her after. “You do realize that, don’t you? Makes me think I might be able to retire.”

“Oh, no,” Natasha answers. “If anyone gets to retire, it’s me.”

“Fair enough.” Fury regards her silently for a moment. “Although I have trouble picturing you relaxing by the beach.”

Natasha glances at Laura and the kids. Laura is tough as nails, but Natasha can’t send her back to their empty house, missing five years of life and one family member. Nobody should have to deal with that alone. “I think I’ll head out to the countryside, actually.”

Clint wants more than anything for life to go back to the way it was. Like he’s only been having a nightmare, terrifying but not real, and he’s opened his eyes at last. Like the last five years just didn’t happen- and why not, when for Laura and the kids they _didn’t-_ and he can be the man he once was.

And then his daughter grins at him and asks when the next archery lesson is and five years worth of heartless kills come rushing back ( _because they’re gone and you’re still here)_ and before he knows it he’s fleeing the room.

Life is different, out in the country. It’s different in that that Natasha doesn’t have a million life-or-death situations calling for her attention at every minute of the day. It’s different in that she doesn’t have to strategize and organize and plan out every move she makes. It’s different in that she no longer has to live with the knowledge that the world has been shattered and it’s up to her to pick up the pieces.

It’s the same in that, no, the world _has_ been shattered, just on a much smaller scale.

Nathaniel is too young to really understand the implications of what’s happened, both to the world and to his father. Cooper is older, understands more, takes it harder. He’s grown quiet, and has taken to crawling into his mother’s bed at night.

Lila is a different story. In the blink of an eye, she’s lost her father, and the few friends she had in her isolated life are suddenly five years older than her. She’s devastated, and in her devastation she is _furious._ She yells at her brothers and her mother and even Natasha, and spends most of her days shut inside her room.

“I don’t know what to do,” Laura confides one day, standing over the kitchen sink. Natasha stands next to her, helping clean the remains of lunch. Lila’s plate is untouched; the girl had stormed up to her room before taking a single bite.

Natasha wishes she had answers- that’s why she came here, isn’t it, to help? “Give her time,” she says.

Laura sighs. “Before, when he would leave… there was always a chance. And I knew the day would come when he didn’t come back. But how the hell do you prepare a child for that?” Laura scrubs the plate in her hands vigorously, harder than necessary, as if cleaning the plate will wipe away the pain her children have to go through.

Natasha holds out a hand. “Here. I’ll take care of this. You go talk to her.”

Larua hesitates, then nods gratefully and leaves Natasha to the dishes.

It’s not much help, but it’s something.

Clint walks around the house at night, alone. Stars dot the sky above him, but he doesn’t look up. He’s had enough of space for a while.

Inside, his wife and children sleep soundly and safely. It’s all he’s ever wanted. It should be enough. Maybe one day it will be, when he’s finished hurting and grieving and reliving every regret that haunts his mind.

He sighs. He knows he should try to get some sleep. He turns back to the house, but against his own wishes he stops and glances up at the stars.

“Miss you,” he whispers.

Natasha has never been one for getting much sleep. The country hasn’t changed that. Most nights she ends up out on the porch, alone with her thoughts and the crickets and the stars.

She doesn’t know if she’s doing any good here. She doesn’t know where she’ll go when she leaves. Maybe she’ll return to the Avengers, to what she’s good at. Maybe she’ll disappear into the world. Or maybe she will stay, because it may be small and broken but this family is her home, the only fragment of peace she has left.

There’s time for her to figure it out. She just wishes she didn’t have to do it without her friend. Natasha leans back and gazes up at the sky, wondering if she can see that awful planet from here. An impossible notion, but still she looks.

“Miss you,” she whispers.

* * *

_Timelines are tricky things._

The last thing Lila remembers is shooting the arrow. Her dad is watching proudly, giving occasional comments on her posture. Her mom and her brothers are off in the distance, playing and setting up the picnic.

She lines up her next shot, breathes like her dad taught her, and releases the arrow. It should be a straight shot, but just before she lets it fly, a strange numbing spreads through her fingers. The shot goes wide, into the grass beyond her target. Lila doesn’t see where it lands. She’s already gone.

_Time can fracture and twist and branch into different paths._

Either five years later or three months later- it all depends on perspective, these days- Lila finds her father’s bow and arrows stowed away under the bed in the guest room. They’re secured by about twenty different locks, but Aunt Nat taught her how to disarm locks like this by the time she was ten. It takes a little time and concentration, but soon she’s holding her father’s bow in her hands. The feel is familiar, like the bow that she uses for practice, but she knows that this one is far more deadly.

This was the bow her father used to fight the real threats. The aliens, the villains, the monsters. Those things are still out there, but the bow sits locked away under a bed.

_Time can also converge back to a single point, a destination that was perhaps inevitable all along._

There was a time when Clint Barton was Hawkeye. But now-

(Clint Barton is dead.)

(Clint Barton is done fighting.)

There was a time when Lila was happy to stay at home with her family, to trust in her father and Aunt Nat to keep her safe. But now-

(He’s dead and he’s not coming back, not this time. And after five years of keeping the world from falling apart, Natasha Romanov is just trying to put herself back together.)

(He won’t talk about what happened, won’t even give her lessons anymore. Something inside of him died when Natasha Romanov did- possibly even before.)

One thing is still the same. People need something to believe in. They need the Avengers. And the Avengers need Hawkeye.

 _Dad and Aunt Nat can rest now_ , Lila thinks to herself as she straps the bow to her back. _Their work is done. It’s my turn._


End file.
